KELLY SMITH - SINGS JOHN LENNON & PAUL McCARTNEY SONGBOOK - 1964

Keely Smith (born Dorothy Jacqueline Keely, March 9, 1932) is an American jazz and popular music singer who enjoyed popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. She collaborated with, among others, Louis Prima and Frank Sinatra.

Smith showed a natural aptitude for singing at a young age. At age 14, the Portsmouth, Virginia native started singing with a naval air station band led by Saxie Dowell. At 15, she got her first paying job with the Earl Bennett band.

Smith made her professional debut with Louis Prima in 1949 (the couple was married in 1953); Smith played the "straight guy" in the duo to Prima's wild antics and they recorded many duets. These include Johnny Mercer's and Harold Arlen's "That Ol' Black Magic", which was a Top 20 hit in the US in 1958. In 1959, Smith and Prima were awarded the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus for "That Ol' Black Magic". Her "dead-pan" act was a hit with fans. The duo followed up with the minor successes "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen", a revival of the 1937 Andrews Sisters hit. Smith and Prima's act was a mainstay of the Las Vegas lounge scene for much of the 1950s. Though her actual voice was not used, she was caricatured as "Squealy Smith" in Bob Clampett's 1960 Beany and Cecil episode "So What and the Seven Whatnots," a Snow White spoof in a Vegas setting.

Smith appeared with Prima in the 1959 film, Hey Boy! Hey Girl!, singing "Fever", and also appeared in and sang on the soundtrack of the previous year's Thunder Road. Her song in Thunder Road was "Whippoorwill". Her first big solo hit was "I Wish You Love" in 1957. In 1961, Smith divorced Prima. She then signed with Reprise Records, where her musical director was Nelson Riddle. In 1965, she had Top 20 hits in the United Kingdom with an album of Beatles compositions, and a single, "You're Breaking My Heart" which reached #14 in April. As of 2013, her Reprise recordings have never been made available on CD.

In 1985, she made a comeback with I'm In Love Again (Fantasy Records). Her albums, Swing, Swing, Swing (2002), Keely Sings Sinatra (2001) for which she was Grammy nominated, and Keely Swings Count Basie Style with Strings (2002) garnered critical and fan acclaim.

In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.

Smith released Vegas '58 – Today a compilation album of her best known songs, all recorded live. Smith has re-recorded a number of songs from her Prima years, including a modified version of "Oh Marie," which has been renamed "Oh Louis" in tribute. By her own admission, she has never had a singing lesson and cannot read music.

She works a light touring schedule. She was booked at the Cafe Carlyle in New York City in 2007. On February 10, 2008, Smith performed "That Old Black Magic" with Kid Rock at the 50th Grammy Awards. Smith also went on to influence Pop star Paloma Faith who at "Later at the Proms", the Guy Barker Orchestra and Miss Faith performed Smith's biggest hit All Night Long.

Smith is of Irish and Native American ancestry. She married Louis Prima in 1953; the couple divorced in 1961. The couple had two children: Toni Elizabeth and Luanne Francis.

In 1961, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reported that Smith had dated and broken up with music executive Morris Levy. In 1965, she married Jimmy Bowen. The couple divorced in 1969.

Smith married singer Bobby Milano (real name Charles Caci) in 1975 in Palm Springs. Frank Sinatra gave the bride away.

In 1986, Smith faced legal problems for failing to withhold employee personal income and disability insurance taxes in connection with vending companies (including Piggy Vending) she owned in Palm Springs, California.

In 2008, Vanessa Claire Smith and Jake Broder wrote and starred in the new musical, Louis & Keely Live at the Sahara, which premiered at Los Angeles' Sacred Fools Theater Company and went on to be nominated for four Ovation Awards, including the Franklin R. Levy Award for Musical in an Intimate Theatre, which it won.

TRACK LIST:

1. If I feel;

2. This girls;

3. Please, please me;

4. And I love him;

5. World without love;

6. She loves you;

7. A hard day's night;

8. Do you want to know a secret?;

9. Can't buy me love;

10. All my loving;

11. I want to hold your hand;

12. P.S. I love you

Links:

KELLY SMITH

SINGS JOHN LENNON & PAUL McCARTNEY SONGBOOK

HELEN MERRIL - SINGS THE BEATLES - 1970

Helen Merrill (born Jelena Ana Milcetic, July 21, 1930) is an American jazz vocalist. Merrill's recording career has spanned six decades. She has recorded and performed with notable jazz musicians.

Merrill was born in New York City in 1930 to Croatian immigrant parents. She began singing in jazz clubs in the Bronx in 1944, aged fourteen. By the time she was sixteen, Merrill had taken up music full-time. In 1952, Merrill made her recording debut when she was asked to sing "A Cigarette For Company" with the Earl Hines Band; the song was released on the D'Oro label, created specifically to record Hines' band with Merrill. Etta Jones was in Hines' band at the time and she too sang on this session, which was reissued on the Xanadu label in 1985. At this time she was married to musician Aaron Sachs. They divorced in 1956.

Merrill was signed by Mercury Records for their new Emarcy label. In 1954, Merrill recorded her first LP, an eponymous record featuring trumpeter Clifford Brown and bassist/cellist Oscar Pettiford, among others. The album was produced and arranged by Quincy Jones, who was then twenty-one years old. The success of Helen Merrill prompted Mercury to sign her for an additional four-album contract.

Merrill's follow-up to Helen Merrill was the 1956 LP, Dream of You, which was produced and arranged by bebop arranger and pianist Gil Evans. Evans' work on Dream of You was his first in many years. His arrangements on Merrill's laid the musical foundations for his work in following years with Miles Davis.

After recording sporadically through the late 1950s and 1960s, Merrill spent much of her time touring Europe, where she enjoyed more commercial success than she had in the United States. She settled for a time in Italy, recording an album there and doing concerts with jazz musicians Piero Umiliani, Chet Baker, Romano Mussolini, and Stan Getz. In 1960 arranger composer Ennio Morricone worked with Helen Merrill on an EP "Helen Merrill sings Italian Songs"on the RCA Italiana label.

Parole e Musica: Words and Music was recorded in Italy with Umiliani's orchestra in the early 1960s while Merrill was living there. The LP features the unusual additions preceding each song, of spoken translations of eloquent Italian word lyrics, complementing the ballads and torch songs.

She returned to the U.S. in the 1960s, but moved to Japan in 1966, staying after touring there and marrying Donald J. Brydon (of United Press International) in April 1967. She developed a following in Japan that remains strong to this day. In addition to recording while in Japan, Merrill became involved in other aspects of the music industry, producing albums for Trio Recordsand hosting a show on a Tokyo radio station.

Merrill returned to the US in 1972 and has continued recording and regular touring since then. Her later career has seen her experiment in different music genres. She has recorded a bossa nova album, a Christmas album and a record's worth of Rodgers and Hammerstein, among many others. Two albums from Merrill's later career have been tributes to past musical partners. In 1987, she and Gil Evans recorded fresh arrangements of their Dream of You; the new recordings were released under the title Collaboration and became the most critically acclaimed of Merrill's albums in the 1980s. 

In 1987 she co-produced a CD album, Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter. In 1995 she recorded Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown as a tribute to the trumpeter. One of her millennium released recordings draws from her Croatian heritage as well as her American upbringing: Jelena Ana Milcetic a.k.a. Helen Merrill (2000). The album combines jazz, pop and blues songs with several traditional Croatian songs sung in Croatian.

Merrill has been married three times, first to musician Aaron Sachs, secondly to UPI vice president Donald J. Brydon, and thirdly to arranger-conductor Torrie Zito. She has one child, a son, Allan, by her first marriage, who is also a singer, known professionally as Alan Merrill.

TRACK LIST:

1. Let it be;
2. Lady Madonna;
3. Because;
4. The word;
5. Norwegian wood;
6. Here, there and everywhere;
7. Golden slumbers;
8. And I love him;
9. In my life;
10. Mother's nature son;
11. If I feel;
12. I want you.

Links:

HELEN MERRIL

SINGS THE BEATLES - 1970